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Are Black Men Always the Culprit?

It’s old news by now, but given the fact that I’ve been AWOL for now over a week, I feel the need to write about it. Yes, it’s the story of Ashley Todd. Below is a preliminary report on Ashley Todd that made national news.

A McCain campaign volunteer who reported that a tall black man robbed her and then cut a “B” onto her cheek after seeing a McCain bumper sticker on her car has been given a polygraph test because of “inconsistencies” in her story, police said.

Police said the student, Ashley Todd, of College Station, Texas, who is white, told them she was attacked by a 6-foot-4 black man Wednesday night.

Among other things, police said photos and bank card information from an automated teller machine where the college student claimed she was robbed do not show her using the machine at the time, police said.

Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard wouldn’t release the polygraph results, but said, “we’re still looking at some inconsistencies” in the woman’s story.

I guess inconsistencies were an understatement.

As it stands, she recanted her entire statement and it appears that all of her facial injuries were self-inflicted. Currently she is being recommended for psychiatric care.

Well, the benchmark in cases like this is the Susan Smith story of 1994 when the 23-year-old mother drowned her own kids in a lake and blamed a black man for the crime. She went on television and boo-hooed endlessly while her husband stood by equally as dismayed. Of course, her story unravelled as well. But I think the problem is that in this country, we’re so easily baited by racial issues that such a story was believable.

Just as believable as the Duke Lacrosse team being accused of raping the black stripper.

However, it still echoes of a country who’s racial problems have yet to be solve; where we’ve yet to adequately deal with the pathology of slavery and Jim Crow teachings where subtle and tacit prejudices are passed down from generation to generation in both black and white families. My pastor always said from the pulpit “Not everyone of your color is of your kind; and not everyone not your color is against you.”

It’s hard to listen to stories such as this one with Ashley Todd because she descibed a 6’4″ black male. Well, I’m 6’2″ and prolly an inch taller if I wear Timbs, that’s enough for me to be stopped if I was walking on the street in the vicinity. My mind goes back to the Emmett Till and his run ins with a white woman, and the alleged violence of a white woman that sparked the riots in Rosewood, Florida in 1922. A lot of crap has happened in this country when a white woman cried foul.

Often times, the black male is pointed to as the culprit.

Why is it that the black male in many instances is the culprit? Is it that it’s just part of life; are we always in the wrong place at the wrong time? I daresay that instances like this of Ashley Todd or even Susan Smith are the mere results of the ethos of our time. Apparently a zeitgest from which we have failed to move from since 1865.

Even after watching a clip from Anderson Cooper’s CNN special from last year when they were interviewing Chicago Public School high schoolers after the number of CPS murders had skyrocketed in the past two years, one of the young men said “It’s just the way it is” already succumbing to the fact that life could not and can not be different than what it already is. If it was as simple as “getting up and getting a job” I’m quite convinced “they” would have done it already.

The cycle of violence perpetuating more violence in one’s own community coupled with how those outside of those communities view them does nothing more than fuel the flames of the demise of the black male.

Frankly, I’m tired of seeing this ish day in and day out. I’m waiting for something to change. I don’t know what that change looks like or what it feels like. But somethings got to give and quickly.